What was the biggest shock after having a baby?

[Thefaceofboe]

Mine was that babies don’t necessarily go to bed around 7pm. I always presumed bath and bed would be done at 7pm and baby would wake up for the day at 7am. My 3mo does 11pm - 11am

How shit my h would be.

Also - how much pregnancy would affect me mentally. You’re always told how you’ll glow, particularly the second trimester you’ll have loads of energy etc etc. I was definitely short changed! I had debilitating hyperemesis and mentally I lost everything - my zest for life was just gone. It was like I had been locked in a cupboard inside of my own head. The minute she was born, i came back. It was like the bit in the wizard of oz when Dorothy steps out into the colour? That makes me sound mad but im so so glad. I couldn’t have managed otherwise.

@DaphneDeloresMoorhead

That I felt like a prisoner in my house and would spend the entire of my maternity leave finding reasons not to be in it

Haha yes!! My DH always wants to stay in at weekends and I’m like are you mad? I’ve spent all week trapped in here.

The whole thing was pretty shocking. I knew it hurt giving birth but was pretty traumatised by it. 2nd time I was like "I've got this". Mind you, got G&A that time!

Then when you realise you've ruined your life because baby cries all night.

Then when you wonder what you did wrong in a former life to be incessantly washing poo out of stuff, or wiping up vomit, or more poo. I'm not that put off by bodily fluids but there's a limit and that's before you even get to leaking boobs.

Your boobs swelling up as your milk comes in.

That BF is bloody hard, especially if you get mastitis.

Trying to do anything with a baby in tow is a million times harder. It took me a week to leave the house first time. One day we tried but had to erect the pram. 2nd time I went out when ds2 was less than a day old. I made a point of it. Baby comes with.

It's a shock because we get it so easy for about 30 years of just looking after yourself.

I agree with all these. Aside from all the awful stuff I realised what love actually was, it completely changed my relationship with my own mum. I appreciate and realise how much she has done and continues to do for me, my siblings and her grandkids.

Oh God yes just realised. It's a shock how much falls to the woman and the guys life is less changed.

Another one saying lack of sleep. If only I could have caught up on sleep then the rest of it wouldn't have seemed like such a slog and I wouldn't have been walking around in a sleepy fog for the first two or three years. If someone had told me that my sleep would be shit for a definitive amount of time I could have counted down and handled it better, but the not knowing when (or IF) I would ever have a decent amount of sleep again almost finished me off.

How seriously ill with preeclampsia I actually was as when I took a shower (12 hours after EMCS), unaided, and didn’t feel like I was going to keel over and die for the first time in months. I literally felt amazing after they cut my baby out of me because I had felt like absolute death for a good 10 weeks before hand (without actually realising it). Which made me feel guilty because my body was in fact on its road to killing her and I didn’t take the medical advice as seriously as I should have.

How much of a mission it is to leave the house, so much so that I don’t do it half as often as I should. I mean staying in a top floor flat, winter and shit weather doesn’t help but still, I feel guilty that the most I do each day is open the blinds for some daylight and muddle through the haze of fighting sleep and relentless crying.

How much I would love my little NICU warrior and how proud I would be that she chubbed up and thrived so fast once she was out of me.

The realisation that she will be my only one due to the preeclampsia, I couldn’t go through it again and I wouldn’t do it to another innocent wee baby.

How something so terrifying and traumatic could have happened to me and everyone just behaved as if nothing had happened at all. 😑

As PPs have already said, after four days of back-to-back labour in which I had not slept or eaten a meal, I was then expected to look after a newborn immediately without any help (as soon as visiting hours ended). The maternity unit was so busy it actually closed while I was there, I barely saw a midwife on antenatal, nobody explained anything to me and I was in utter shock that I was mentally and physically destroyed and now I was expected to keep this tiny little fragile creature alive with my poor shattered body. I still feel it was completely brutal.

DSIL picked us up from hospital which was very kind, but I remember being completely shocked she had parked a couple streets away & that I wasn’t going to get picked up at the door! She hasn’t given birth and maybe didn’t realize? I’d been in hospital for 5 days following a PP hemorrhage and was too knackered to request I didn’t have to walk. Maybe I was being precious?!

How horrific it would be to have that first bowel movement after, literally felt like I was giving birth all over again was doing breaths and everything.

The sleep deprivation, nothing can prepare you, I thought I was tired before but I really had no idea.

The massive adrenaline rush that just powers you through at the beginning. I was awake for 72 hours straight during labour and when we got DD home I just couldn't switch off I just stared at her for hours.

Great thread, btw. This definitely belongs in Classics and should be a compulsory read before TTC, for both parents.

That it’s nowhere near as bad as everyone told me it would be. People like to tell you horror stories about EVERYTHING. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world but I got one that since 10 weeks has just gone to bed and I don’t hear a peep out him till about 8am. Every day I think I’m living in some sort of alternative reality because everyone said it wouldn’t be like this! I think people should be told the good bits too, I was almost put off having kids completely but I’m so glad I wasn’t 😅

How consumed I would become with another humans bodily functions and how much a new born can poo. The first Poonami was a shock

Losing weight while gaining bump in early pregnancy because food was repellant and triggered my gag reaction. Gaining 50% of my bodyweight in the second half of pregnancy once I could eat most foods again.
Ending up near housebound with SPD
40 hour labour, EMCS and ending up in HDU.
Not slimming down enough to wear maternity jeans to leave hospital. It took weeks for them to fit again
The joy of a baby who indulged me with 2 glorious hours asleep at a time after the torture of the SPD/ Carpal Tunnel combo that woke me hourly with dead limbs and pins and needles.
34F boobs when you're used to 34B!

Sorry if the comment above was already sounding a bit smug (it’s only because I’m still in shock I’m not crying because it’s so awful) 😂

But the other one is the fact you don’t have to have this traumatic experience to get the baby here. Never in my whole life had I ever made anyone who played their birth story down or said anything about it being good. I had a c-section and I’d heard every horrendous detail about them before I went in there as well. Thought well if I don’t bleed to death on the operating table I’m guaranteed to be paralysed I suppose 🤷🏼‍♀️ Neither happened! It didn’t hurt at all and within a minute of them cutting me open they showed me my baby. Like how does that happen?! Who are these people?! 🙈 but there was no drama, no emergency buzzers, no doctors coming running into the room, no pain really and no horrific recovery like so many people said. I think I’ve just aimed so low with the whole thing I’ve been blown away at how not bad it’s been 😂 If I have another I might be sorely disappointed

That DH and my mum each thought the other should help me with DD1 and that it would all be down to me no matter how sleep deprived I was.

realising that they were here to stay !

No sleep, excruciatingly painful breastfeeding

That noone was going to come and pick up the first one to give me a chance of settling in the second for that tricky fourth trimester

The worry about something happening to them. I worry when I go in the car in case we get into an accident. I worry about him getting a serious illness. I worry if he chokes in his sleep and I don't hear him. I wouldn't say it consumes my life, they're just passing thoughts I have at times and I have such a fear that one day I will lose him and I won't be able to cope with that loss.

@sarah13xx

Sorry if the comment above was already sounding a bit smug (it’s only because I’m still in shock I’m not crying because it’s so awful) 😂

But the other one is the fact you don’t have to have this traumatic experience to get the baby here. Never in my whole life had I ever made anyone who played their birth story down or said anything about it being good. I had a c-section and I’d heard every horrendous detail about them before I went in there as well. Thought well if I don’t bleed to death on the operating table I’m guaranteed to be paralysed I suppose 🤷🏼‍♀️ Neither happened! It didn’t hurt at all and within a minute of them cutting me open they showed me my baby. Like how does that happen?! Who are these people?! 🙈 but there was no drama, no emergency buzzers, no doctors coming running into the room, no pain really and no horrific recovery like so many people said. I think I’ve just aimed so low with the whole thing I’ve been blown away at how not bad it’s been 😂 If I have another I might be sorely disappointed

Yes. Same experience here. Lovely calm c section both times. First baby slept 12hrs plus a night solid at 3 months. Second baby at maybe 5 months. All I'd heard was horror stories, particularly about c sections. I was surprised how well babies sleep and how easy having a baby cut out of you is.

@Workyticket

Black poo - mine after the iron tablets they give you after a c- section

Nobody told me - I thought I was dying!

In the 70s you were given iron tablets all through your pregnancy and I like an idiot took them. The upshot was that the worst thing I remember in the couple of weeks after her birth was not being able to poo at all. The second time round I never took them, then in hospital after she was born they gave me one and when I said I hadn't taken them at all, they were shocked, after testing my blood I apparently had better blood that anyone else.

That my partner was so fucking pointless.